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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25484884">The Stranger</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/StopTalkingAtMe/pseuds/StopTalkingAtMe'>StopTalkingAtMe</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The King in Yellow - Robert W. Chambers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, POV First Person, ghost story, paranormal horror</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 02:21:44</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,212</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25484884</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/StopTalkingAtMe/pseuds/StopTalkingAtMe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>What it came to cursed plays, Macbeth wasn't a patch on The King in Yellow.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Multifandom Horror Exchange (2020)</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Stranger</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobberBaroness/gifts">RobberBaroness</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I was drawn into the affair on a particularly chilly afternoon in late October, the sort of dull and drizzly day where the world itself seemed to have been smudged by the thumb of a careless artist. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen my sister's painting of <em>The Stranger</em> – I dimly remembered its having been on display in their sitting room and not thinking much of it at the time. In fact, I’d been rather surprised when I learned it was Tessa’s work; it hadn’t seemed much in her line at all, being rather macabre and overwrought, and I wasn’t at all surprised when I visited them for supper the following week and found it no longer on display.</p><p>There’d been a great deal of water under the bridge since then. Henry’s play, a staging of <em>The King in Yellow</em> unwisely conceived from the outset, had recently had its run at the Lyceum cut short to almost universal contempt and critical opprobrium. Some of the reviews had been enough to make even me wince with sympathy when I read the papers at breakfast and I’d <em>loathed</em> what I’d seen of the play. As far as I was concerned it was a case of <em>good riddance, </em>but I'd prepared myself to make sympathetic noises, all the same. As it turned out, it wasn't necessary, since when I dined with them Henry seemed in such good spirits that I began to wonder if he hadn't found the play ending something of a relief. Still, there seemed something odd about him, an intensity that made me suspect I ought to steel myself for the moment he asked to invest in his next project. He was, I'm afraid, that sort of brother-in-law, and even then he was considerably less feckless than the other wastrels with whom Tessa might have saddled herself. On the whole, I rather liked him.</p><p>He did indeed get me to one side, although it wasn’t with the intention of tapping me for cash. Instead, flicking ash from his cigarette into the ashtray, he leaned forward with a conspiratorial air, his eyes twinkling. “As a matter of fact, old chap, there’s something I’d like you to take a look at.”</p><p>“Oh, Henry, no,” Tessa said in protest. “Please don’t bother Charles with<em> that.</em>”</p><p>“It won’t take but a moment,” Henry said, and I sensed something odd about his manner. For all his joviality, a few times through dinner the atmosphere had struck me as somewhat muted, as if the grim, greyness of the day were seeping through to stifle the mood, and Tessa’s smiles seemed thinner than usual, frayed at the edges. I hesitated, but she smiled at me with genuine if somewhat weary affection and waved me off, and so I followed Henry into the study.</p><p>I saw the painting at once, rehung above his writing desk and far too large for the space. As before, Tessa’s delicate touch sat uncomfortably with the dull browns and ochres of the palette. Only in the background did her use of light and her love for bright colours come through, in the intricately detailed backdrop which showed the landscape of Carcosa and the skies overhead, streaked with the incandescent glories of dying stars. Even then, the colours were muted, as though she’d painted the backdrop in exquisite detail, and then smeared it with a wash of muted brown. A miserable thing, and all the more miserable for how lovely she could have made it, and again I wondered what on earth she could have been thinking.</p><p>In the left-hand third of the landscape canvas, her husband stood at the front of an otherwise empty stage, bordered by thick draping curtains and deep shadows. He wore hooded yellow robes, the skull-like face within the shadowed hood lit from below by the harsh yellow glow of the lime-lights. One too-pale powdered hand emerged from the draping sleeve, reaching up to the face as it to remove the mask. All dreadfully Gaston Leroux, a reference the director had deliberately sought to cultivate. That poor bastard had explained to me in agonisingly tedious detail at one of Henry and Tessa’s excruciating cocktail parties his intention to make the audience themselves feel so much a part of the performance that they would be unable to leave it behind when they left the theatre. I might have told him it was utterly grotesque given the nature of the play, but the pleading look Tessa cast me had induced me to hold my tongue. Frankly, I wish I hadn’t.</p><p>I’d been lucky and devious enough to have escaped seeing the play in its entirety. As much as I liked Henry, the first act had been about as much as I could bear, and I’d had the foresight to place the blame of my having to leave in the interval firmly at the feet of the blameless oysters I’d had at the pre-dinner meal. In the subsequent months I’d managed to sidestep the question of when I’d go to watch it again, giving Henry the impression through some vague muttered compliments that I’d already seen it. Tessa saw through me, of course. Even just the first act had been bad enough: I’d felt something of its influence lingering as a sort of distemper that made me wonder if my lie about the oysters wasn’t coming true. The papers had published numerous indictments of the play, accompanied by reports of the terrible side effects experienced, which naturally had little effect other than significantly increasing ticket sales. As cursed plays went, <em>Macbeth</em> wasn’t a patch on <em>The King in Yellow</em>.</p><p>“You remember the painting, of course,” Henry said.</p><p>“How could I forget”</p><p>“And your thoughts…?”</p><p>“Well…” I paused, nonplussed. “It’s just as hideous as I remember, if that’s what you want to know.”</p><p>He waited, then when it was clear nothing more would be forthcoming, he pressed me further. “Nothing strikes you as odd about it? Do you see anyone else in the painting?”</p><p>Somewhat unwillingly, I leaned closer, resting my weight on the desk. “No.”</p><p>“It’s just as you remember?”</p><p>“I’d rather tried to forget it,” I said, uncomfortable with his intensity. “No offence, old chap, but I made my opinion rather clear the first time I saw it. It’s so different from Tessa’s usual work...” As I spoke, I let my gaze drift to the right across the stage, following the backdrop, the eerie mist-wreathed landscape of Carcosa, until I reached the wings at the far end of the stage, and there I did see something that struck me as odd, a yellowish smudge in the deep shadows. A greasy smear of mustard-coloured paint, at odds with the rest of the painting which for all that it was bloody awful, had at least been deftly executed. The shape was indistinct, but nonetheless still managed to give the impression of a tall, bony figure, half-turned towards the stage. A stagehand perhaps, or another actor waiting for his cue.</p><p>Henry was watching me closely, and when he saw that I’d seen it smiled. “It’s curious, don’t you think?”</p><p>“I never noticed it before,” I admitted. “Rather clever of Tessa, I must say.” When he gave me an odd look, I hurried to explain. “Given the subject matter.”</p><p>“The King in Yellow himself,” he mused, his eyes shining with a light I didn’t like. “But it was there before, you think?”</p><p>“I suppose it must have been. I’m afraid I never looked all that closely. What does Tessa say?”</p><p>“She says it must have been there all along–”</p><p>“And that it ought to be burned,” Tessa said from the doorway.</p><p>I gave Henry an apologetic smile. “I’m afraid I have to agree with my sister on that one. Burning might be the best thing for it.” <em>And for the play itself</em>, I added silently. <em>Every copy.</em></p><p>Henry saw me to the door, still smiling, but as I stepped out into the darkness, he stepped closer with a conspiratorial air that I found distinctly unpleasant. “You were joking, of course. I realise you must have been disinclined to say anything more in front of Tessa, but you saw him too.”</p><p>“It’s late, Henry,” I said gently disengaging myself. “It’s late, and I’m very tired.”</p><p>I’m not sure what I thought at the time, if not that Tessa might have been having a joke either at my expense or at Henry’s. My sister could have an odd sense of humour at times, although I wouldn’t have thought this the sort of joke she’d try to pull, defacing one of her own paintings. Still, it was <em>that</em> painting, and I was quite sure she’d hated it just as much as I had, so I couldn’t be certain. If it was her, it was a nasty little trick. That ugly smear of yellow combined with Henry’s speculation of it being the King himself left me with an after-image of figure with black, cold eyes in a pallid wasted face, turning inexorably towards me. There was a great deal I wouldn’t have put past my sister, but surely not that.</p><p>It wasn’t the painting that got me to agree to return in the morning, nor Henry’s somewhat feverish manner. Rather it was Tessa’s wan smile as she kissed my cheek and wished me a safe journey home. I liked Henry well enough, but I would have done anything for my sister, and so in the morning I returned and found that the painting had changed again.</p><p>The yellow smear seemed clearer and more distinct, as though the actor was readying himself – and I was quite certain it was a man, although there were only three actors in the play, and the other two were female – for his cue. He seemed to be in costume too, with the suggestion of cloth-of-gold draped over narrow shoulders and a naked, bony chest, the sallow skin clinging to jutting ribs. What could be seen of the face was an echo of the grotesque mask that Henry wore.</p><p>My sister and brother-in-law waited, watching me as I examined the painting. Henry sat in the chair, seeming still to be drunk from the night before, although he hadn’t been more than tipsy when I’d left. Tessa’s arms were wrapped around herself, her hands cupping her elbows, a sure sign that she was feeling ill-at-ease. Her tight-pressed lips only pressed tighter when I laughed, glancing at her over Henry’s head.</p><p>“You’re having me on.”</p><p>She glared at me. No woman can glare quite like a sister.</p><p>“Afraid not,” Henry said, his tone one of brittle humour. “It’s him all right. The King himself. I don’t think he quite liked the way I played the role.”</p><p>“You shouldn’t joke, Henry,” Tessa said sharply. Then to me, she said, “It’s something in the paint, I think. Making it fade unevenly.”</p><p>“Or something seeping through,” Henry suggested, ever helpful.</p><p>“It isn’t the only change, though,” I said, and gestured to the painting, not to the unnerving fellow in the wings, but to Henry. “Do you see? The position of the hand is different. It’s reaching up for the mask.” Tessa stepped closer to examine it, and I watched her closely, searching for any sign that she was to blame. If the way she blanched was feigned, she was a far better actress than Henry was an actor, and of all my sister’s talents lying wasn’t one of them.</p><p>The painting changed again the next time I saw it, and the next, and the next, the eerie yellow figure creeping in gradual increments towards Henry’s cloaked and masked King, yet always contriving to stay in the gloom so that it could never glimpsed clearly. Nor did it ever present itself full on towards the audience, but kept its face concealed at all times, giving the impression of a twisted spine, or black eyes peering out from between fingers splayed across its face. It stayed behind Henry at all times, stirring up memories of my first visits to the theatre as a child, bellowing ‘he’s behind you!’ at an unsuspecting idiot, and that childish fun was warped into revulsion and dread.</p><p>Most frustrating of all, it was never clearly glimpsed, so I could never be quite certain that it wasn’t just a smudge on the paint. We human beings are as a rule very good at seeing patterns in things, but the other changes were not so easily dismissed. As the figure gradually closed in on him, Henry's hand drew closer and closer to his mask, and while the yellow figure might not have been executed clearly, Henry was, and in such a manner that only my sister could have managed it.</p><p>Whatever suspicions I’d had about Tessa’s involvements I soon gave them up as she grew paler and more distressed as time went on. When she visited me, with her hands knotting in her lap, she confided in me that if it had been the smear alone she might have assumed Henry was to blame. Some sort of nervous break, perhaps. It couldn’t be healthy keeping the awful thing in his study, gazing down on him day after day. Reading the play itself was bad enough, and she couldn’t get the fate of the poor girl who’d played Cassilda out of her mind.</p><p>But it wasn’t just the smudge, and while Henry might have contrived to repeatedly paint and repaint the yellow figure – although even then she didn’t see how he could have done such a thing – he didn’t have the skill to have made the other changes. The whole matter was beyond comprehension.</p><p>“You ought to burn the damn thing and have done,” I told her, and a reluctant expression crossed her face. She rubbed at her arm, grimacing.</p><p>“I would, but...”</p><p>“But?”</p><p>The expression passed like a cloud then and she smiled at her own foolishness, the first genuine smile I’d seen from her in a while. “But what if it escapes?” she said, all but laughing at her own foolishness. She couldn’t have known the chill that crept down my spine.</p><p>Henry’s manner changed too. He became more brusque, determined to treat the whole matter as a joke, even while his eyes grew more sunken and he bloated out so much so that after I’d gone almost a week without paying them a visit, I was shocked at the change in him. I’d been dreading returning to their home again. The creature had crept into my skull as it had crept across the stage, to the point where I kept thinking I glimpsed it in the corner of my eye. I dreamed about watching the play, only this time I was alone, the only soul in the empty auditorium, and it wasn’t Henry on the stage, but the Yellow King himself, the train of his robes sweeping out behind him and his black eyes filled with malice.</p><p>I was so intensely dreading seeing the painting again that when I looked and saw nothing my knees all but weakened in relief. It wasn’t hiding in the shadows, now in the wings: it simply wasn’t there. I felt a flood of relief so powerful I almost laughed. Then I saw it, concealed behind Henry himself, all but hidden except for its hand, which was rendered clearly in oils for the first time, long bony fingers, pallid as corpse-worms, curling over Henry’s shoulder, the nails very long and sharp. And Henry’s hand was upon his mask, dislodging it enough to reveal the dark hollow of an eye. In my mind a woman’s voice rang out in horror: <em>No mask? No mask!</em></p><p>I shuddered.</p><p>When Henry showed me to the door, his cheerful manner and conversational tone were at odds with his terrible words. “He was there that day.”</p><p>“I beg your pardon?”</p><p>“The King. I remember the day Tessa made the preliminary sketches. He was there. She must have seen him. She claims otherwise, but he was there. He never left.”</p><p>“Henry–”</p><p>He gripped my arm, less leaning towards me than pulling me close. He was unnaturally strong. “He’s always here, Charles. Don’t you understand? He never goes away!”</p><p>I might have said something, had not a movement in the hallway mirror caught my eye. The reflection was partially concealed by an arrangement of calla lilies, but I could just about see Henry, and not just him either: at his back it seemed there stood a yellow figure, positioned with the back of its head pressing against his. It nestled as close to him as might a reflection or a shadow, yet now in the mirror it seemed to be turning its face towards the mirror and raising its cold black eyes to mine.</p><p>I made my excuses and left, all but tripping down the steps in my haste to be away, and spent an uneasy night telling myself I must have imagined it.</p><p>Over a week passed with me doing little more than feeling guilty for avoiding them, until Tessa herself called me and told me that all was well and that whatever strangeness it was that befell them had passed. Reluctantly, I went to visit them, bracing myself for the worst, but found them both in good spirits once more, Henry acting as if nothing had ever been amiss, and Tessa’s relief so palpable I could have wept for ever thinking she might have been to blame.</p><p>They blamed the whole business on an attack of nerves, the result of Henry’s play ending so suddenly and under such terrible circumstances. I sipped my sherry, and kept myself from suggesting it might have been the effects of the play itself. When I asked about the painting, I learned they had put it into storage, and were considering their options, whether a time would ever come when it would not be in bad taste to sell it. “Perhaps,” Tessa said, laughing as she cast a fond glance at Henry, “we might burn it after all.”</p><p>He smiled, squeezing her hand in his, then tilted his head, glancing at me. Tessa had looked away, and so did not see how the light caught his eyes, and made them seem for a moment as though they looked not upon a human soul, but as though he were hollow to the core, and with something hiding within. It was a fancy that came and went swiftly, and I laughed it off, hiding my unease and putting it down to the effects of the painting, lingering like a stain upon my soul.</p><p>Simply my imagination, disturbed by the painting just as it had been by the play itself, playing tricks on me. Such as when I happened to catch sight of my reflection when I took my leave. There was something there, concealed in a shadowed doorway. A yellow smear, waiting, waiting for its cue. I looked away, forcing laughter. Just a smudge of dirt on the glass, but it felt like a fist clenching tight around my throat. Nothing there, but the Greek Chorus of my childhood sang out even so as I waited, frozen in place, for the moment the hand fell upon my shoulder, and for the mask, at last, to drop.</p>
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